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by navyblueoveryou



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, Sexuality, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:47:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24834055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navyblueoveryou/pseuds/navyblueoveryou
Summary: Ellie and Dina find weird rainbow flags all over a specific area of Seattle and find themselves in a bookstore that explains it all. A little extension of a sweet moment from TLOU2. No major spoilers.
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 287





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**Author's Note:**

> A/N: At time of writing, I am currently about 6 hours deep into the game, but because I spend so much time wandering around the new scenery, we're talking Seattle Day 1. This does not contain MAJOR plot line spoilers - just a small interaction between Ellie and Dina that is optional while wandering Seattle that I felt was really sweet and innocent. Wanted to elaborate on it. This is my first TLOU/TLOU2 related writing, be easy on me! I'm dusting off my fanfic writing skills (or lack thereof) for this game. Godspeed.

_What is it like to just be free?_

Ellie had pondered that same question her entire life from behind the walls of military schools and quarantine zones. Even in Jackson, that same question had made its way into her journal as chicken scratch.

Freedom. What was it? It’s not like Ellie didn’t have any - compared to the environment (er...environments?) in which she’d grown up, Jackson was the closest thing to normal that she knew. But now, at nineteen, she wandered the crumbling roads of Seattle (well, what was left of it), stumbling across a dilapidated bookstore. Just out front, the street was painted with rainbow stripes in the crosswalk, worn flags of the same colors hanging from light posts. 

“What’s with all the rainbows?” Dina quipped. Ellie shrugged. What the hell did she know? They had more than likely been put up before their time, before Outbreak Day, some 25 years prior.

“I dunno,” she mumbled. “Maybe they just like, enjoyed the vibrance.”

Inside the store, an identical flag hung, draped from the top of a bookshelf. Another, not more than 50 feet away, had the same stripes in blue, pink, and white. 

“Do you think their neighborhoods had flags or something?” Dina continued, running her fingers over the worn fabric. “Y’know, like the old FEDRA banners, but to identify their territories.”

Ellie scrunched her eyebrows. She’d never seen something like that. Sure, she’d seen a FEDRA banner - hundreds, maybe thousands of them by now. But never a flag specific to each neighborhood... 

“Think there’s another group here that’s like the WLF?” Ellie offered. “Like, these flags have something to do with them?”

“Seems kinda loud for a militant group,” came Dina’s voice, now muffled as she roamed on the other end of the bookstore, skimming book titles as she passed them. 

“All of these books are about ladies,” she playfully bellyached. Ellie shook her head in response, moving towards the countertop nearest the door to begin the tedious process of scavenging. Did Dina know they were both ‘ladies’? Though Ellie hardly considered herself one. If one of them had to be a lady, it’d be Dina. For sure.

Now she was flipping through one of the books - a paperback with a crimson cover, two women lying scantly clad on a bed under the title. Sorority Secrets.

Looked kinda like those magazines Ellie had found at Bill’s all those years ago. Just with words and no pictures. 

Dina’s eyes seemed to scan the words the way Ellie’s curious fourteen-year-old eyes had scanned those pages. Disgusted by the naked men but unsurprisingly intrigued by the naked women, she’d been interested in girls for as long as she could remember. Even her first kiss in the mall’s department store had been with Riley. The same night they’d both been bitten. The same night Ellie would find her fate had something else in mind for her. 

_Hmm._ She looked down at the forearm that was now tattooed with foliage and a moth. _Rest easy, old friend._

She still felt the sting of survivor’s guilt from time to time.

Crazy that felt like eons ago, somewhere in another galaxy.   
Another lifetime, even.

Ellie shook herself back to the present. There was Dina, still engulfed in that book. She wandered over to see what the fuss was about - the WLF had Seattle boxed in, and they’d really need to get moving - preferably sooner than later.

“Think this is us?” Dina asked, tossing the small book into Ellie’s hands. She caught it against her chest, examining the back cover for a brief summary. Something about bigs and littles? Sororities? 

_What the hell was a sorority?_

But Dina was asking mostly due to the fact that it was obvious these women were romantically involved - that stupid smirk on her face didn’t suggest anything else. Ellie rolled her eyes and tossed the book back onto the shelf.

“You creep.”

“I’ve already seen you naked, what’s the big deal?” Dina said through a giggle. “Is that us or not?”

“I don’t even know what a sorority is,” Ellie griped, going back to business and tossing tape, fabric, and half-empty bottles of rubbing alcohol into her pack and pockets. She had told Dina she loved her, but wasn’t quite ready to discuss their intimate details out loud.

So...filling her pack was the best distraction.

Dina wandered off again, this time coming back with a...pamphlet?

“A trip to a place called Fire Island,” she mused. “Imagine it’s preeeeetty hot on Fire Island. What do you think?”

Ellie stopped to glance at the pamphlet’s cover. Two men in very, very small swimsuits and sunglasses posed together. Their bodies were so chiseled, like Greek gods. In the background, other shirtless men mingled in a pool. At the bottom it read:

HOW TO SPEND A GAY SUMMER ON FIRE ISLAND!

And there was that rainbow flag again, flying high above the scene on the front of the pamphlet’s cover. Her eyes drifted back to the flag in the bookstore. Beside it, a book with a rainbow cover that read in big, bold letters THE BIG BOOK OF GAY.

She couldn’t quite make the correlation with the other flag but...

“Dina. The flags. I think they’re like...” Ellie smirked bashfully. “I think they’re...gay flags. Like, the rainbow one, at least.” She pointed at the book beside the flag for reference. “Look.”

Dina stepped closer to investigate. “Huh,” she exclaimed, hands on her hips. “Maybe you’re right.”

“Never seen a gay flag before,” Ellie continued. “I...didn’t know there even was one.”

“Ya want one?” Dina asked, already reaching for where it was secured. “Boost me up and I’ll get it down for you.” Ellie scrunched her face but Dina was insistent. “It would look cute in your place back in Jackson.”

Ellie's hesitance had the dark haired woman climbing the shelves on her own, tossing it into her partner's arms and hopping down, dusting her hands off. "There. For your place. When we get back."

The tattered fabric felt fragile in Ellie's rough hands. There were people in Jackson old enough to know this flag - she was sure of it. And the harsh comments that had been tossed around after the couple's initial kiss at the party, when they were just friends, confirmed it. The comments specifically directed at her - not so much at Dina. Words that had started physical fights. Words that had put her relationship with Jesse on thin ice.

"Hey." Dina was reeling Ellie out of her own head again, that gentle touch on her jawline reminding her of where they were. Just the two of them.   
Well, and the WLF assholes who were surely lingering nearby. But for now, it was just them.

"It would be cute in um..." now it was Dina's turn to be bashful, a small smirk tugging at the corner of her lips. "In our place."

_Our place._

Ellie rolled the old flag up carefully before tucking it away in her bag. "Okay," she said with a glimmer of hope in her eyes. "We'll keep it, then."


End file.
